As you may, or
may not know, Ki or Chi is what the characters from Dragonball Z use to
perform such attacks as the Kamehameha or the Masenko. But did you also
know that Ki and the philosophy of it has it's roots in Ancient Korea, China
and Japan.

The Ki principle
is that Ki is a universal energy that humans can harness and use to their
own benefits. Akira Toriyama took this idea to the extreme and made it so
that people could use Ki to shoot fireballs of energy after they had trained
their Ki enough.

The first written
account of Ki came in the third century BC. It was described in the Huang
Ti Nei Chung Su Wen (The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine).
From China, where the text originated, it was passed down into Korea in
approximately 200 BC. Soon the principles of Ki were used by Hwa Rang (Flowering
Youth), the warriors of the Korean peninsula. They used the principles of
Ki to enhance their physical and metal power, just as the Z warriors do.

The Yin/Yang
theory is key to the Ki theory. It describes how everything in the universe
is in balance. For example there can be no day without night. There can
be no hot without cold. There can be no life without death, and so on. In
the Yin/Yang philosophy, Yin is negative and Yang is positive. Yin is the
earth; Yang is the heavens. Yin is cold; Yang is hot. Yin is female; Yang
is male. Yin is emptiness; Yang is fullness. Yin is white; Yang is black.

On
the left is the Yin/Yang symbol that I'm sure most people are familiar with.
This shows that within all Yin there are traces of Yang, and within all
Yang the are essences of Yin. For the Ki practitioner heath is a balance
between the two forces, and illness is an imbalance. Also Yin and Yang must
both be experienced by the Ki practitoner and must be in harmony with both.
In this way Ki energy can be utilized in a fashion that is acseptable in
nature.

The knowlage
of Ki was passed on by the monks and priests of ancient Asia. From China,
the knowlage traveled to Korea and then, much later, to Japan. In ancient
Korea the Hwa Rang were taught the prinicples of Ki by Buddist monks. these
monks through years of meditation had taken their knowlage of Ki to such
a point that it was no longer a means of balancing the Yin and Yang in their
body. They taught this advanced Ki training to the Hwa Rang, who used it
to strengthen themselves for battle, just as in Dragonball Z.

It was in the
fouth century AD that the knowlage of Ki was first brought to Japan. But
there is no evidence of it being put into practice until Buddhism as introduced
in AD 602. But during this time Ki knowlage was mainly used for medical
purposes. It wasn't until the 12th century that the priciplas of Ki were
first applied to battle, with the advent of the Samurai. This merger of
Buddhist philosophy and military prinicples gave birth to martial arts such
as Aikido and Korean Hapkido. All madern martial arts use the priciples
of Ki as their primary basis of physical and mental self-defence awareness.

It is due to
the pricipals being the basis of all martial art, that Akira Toriyama was
able to adapt the phiolophy of Ki and take to the extreme. I hope this insight
into what exactly Ki is has been of interest to the Dragonball Z fan. Thanks to The Ki Process by Scott Shaw.